Statistical-mechanical study on anisotropic gel formation process based on motion of the phase boundary and its application

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We studied the processes of the anisotropic gelation of the polymer solutions by drying and dialysis, focusing attention on motion of the sol-gel phase boundary. It was found that thermodynamic instability at the phase boundary induces the anisotropic gelation. The orientation dynamics of the polymers in the thermodynamically-unstable state was constructed. The generalized moving boundary (GMB) picture expressing the gelation process induced by both the inflow and the outflow ions was constructed and a new method for controlling the gelation process on the basis of the GMB picture was developed. We developed an idea giving a unified understanding of the two types of the gelation dynamics, the diffusion limited dynamics for dialysis gelation and the interface energy limited dynamics for drying gelation on the basis of the rate of the thermodynamic destabilization.